Happy Friday! I’m just finally starting to get over my disgusting cold, and thinking about actually leaving my house again, which means today is gonna be a productive day. I hope that is the case for you as well. This weekend is packed with great shows in Toronto, are you headed to Foals, The Breeders or Charles Bradley?? Let me know.

Anyhow, here’s what has interested me over the past couple weeks:

• Westboro Baptist Church To Picket Jeff Hanneman’s Funeral By Singing Ozzy Osbourne’s ‘Crazy Train’. I think the world is excited to see this picket happen, because the WBC psychos will finally get to experience the wrath they deserve, by way of scary Slayer fans.
• Westboro Baptist Church Claims ‘God’ Killed Slayer’s Jeff Hanneman, Fans Dare Them To Picket Funeral. Seriously, it’s gonna be funny.
• Adam Yauch Park officially open in Brooklyn Heights. Awww. Awesome.
• Beastie Boys Sign a Memoir Deal. Also awesome.
• Gwen Stefani ‘Wild Horses’: No Doubt Singer Screws Up Song In Front Of Rolling Stones. Oh my god this is terrible. I almost feel bad for her because how incredibly embarrassing that must have been, but if the Stones ask you to sing with them you learn the lines. And it’s a simple song! Most of it is the chorus repeated!
• Lust For Laughs: Iggy Pop’s concert rider funniest in rock history? I wanna hang out with the guy who wrote it.
• The Invention of David Bowie. A great, detailed look back at his career.
• From Hannah Georgas to Alex Cuba: Canadian musicians on their 1st instruments. This is cute. See them when they were kids!
• See What Sigur Rós Looks Like On The Simpsons. I know no one really cares about the Simpsons anymore, but it’s kind of cool Sigur Ros is gonna be on. I’m gonna make it a point to actually tune in.
• Neutral Milk Hotel Reunites, Announces 2013 Tour Dates. YES! I already saw Mangum and it was probably in my top 3 concert experiences of all time, so I can only imagine with the full band it’ll take the number 1 spot. Praying for a Toronto date.
• Music Dealers: ‘Brands are picking up the pieces of the music industry.’ “It’s almost not cool if you don’t have a brand behind you. If somebody doesn’t think you’re valuable enough to put in a commercial, it’s almost an insult to a band these days.”
• Ticketmaster Accuses 21 of Fraudulent Ticket Buying.
• 5 reasons Why #Coachella’s Social Media Strategy is Genius. It really is great, but it has the large audience and years behind it to account for that.
• Troy Carter Says The Next Technology Disruption In Music Will Happen In Terrestrial Radio.
• In Songza 3.0, Music Isn’t A Choice. It’s A Lifestyle. Hell yes. Songza is my most used and most loved app on my Android. Highly, highly recommended if you’re somehow not already addicted.
• Discover Music Through TV Shows You Like.
• El Mocambo set to close for the summer (or longer). Boo.
• Do Not Touch: A crowdsourced music video, where your mouse pointer is the star. This is neat.
• Rap, Both Good and Bad for Business.
• Music-Map – the Map of Music. This is neat, type in any artist to see all the related artists, then click on another artist to see more related artists. Great way to find new bands you may not know but will probably dig.
• What Song Did You Lose Your Virginity To? Tell me! Mine was Radiohead but I can’t remember which exact song because I was kinda busy.
• World’s most expensive turntables. Insane.
• This Ad Has a Secret Anti-Abuse Message That Only Kids Can See. I like the idea but I agree with the comments - publicizing this kind of defeats the purpose, parents are going to crouch down to look at it. But hopefully it still helps some kids out.
• These 4 Sisters Were Photographed Every Year For 36 Years. I kinda wanna do this with my sis, so cool.
• Banned Captain Beefheart TV Commercial: 60 Seconds The Networks Did Not Want You To See. Lol why was this banned??
• Book Publishers Scramble to Rewrite Their Future.
• Finally, more Beastie Boys greatness – a very early interview with them:

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Anita is a look back at what the exact moment where sexual harassment became a valid work problem that is taken seriously. Prior to Anita Hill infamously speaking out against the sexual harassment she endured working for Clarence Thomas, this kind of treatment was tolerated by women (and men) because they didn’t know they had any other option. She gave us all a voice and right to speak up without the risk of losing our jobs.

I was so young when she did this for feminism that I didn’t even realize I have her to thank for the times where I’ve felt uncomfortable at work and been able to do something about it. The beauty of this film is that it is educating my generation and those women younger than me on what she did for us, and how different the world was just 20 years ago. How acceptable that kind of workplace abuse was. I feel so incredibly lucky to have been born in the time of history that I was.

It was startling to watch her give her testimony facing a large panel of old white men, as they interrogated her and accused her of man hating, revenge, bitterness and lying. They tried to tear her apart because she was honest, and yet she remained calm and poised throughout the entire process. I have no idea how she did it. She deserves a medal from every woman. As if it wasn’t bad enough that she suffered through his harassment the first time, they put her up there and did everything they could to humiliate her in front of the entire world, making her relive every minute detail.

And of course, in the end, they didn’t even care about her testimony. Thomas made it into a racial issue (which is such crap considering she shares his race) and nothing ever happened to him. He took his seat on the Supreme Court and she had to move to another state to avoid all the death threats and harassment she endured after it was over. That in itself is depressing, but the film makes it very clear that what she did is an act of heroism that will be remembered for generations to come.

Thank you Anita.

Kathleen Hanna is another fascinating, inspiring woman to my generation. As much as I could never really get into the whole riot grrrl scene because of my aversion to vocals that involve screaming, I have incredible respect for its place in the third wave of feminism that sparked because of the injustices faced by women like Anita Hill at the time.

While I never really enjoyed Bikini Kill’s sound, I did like Le Tigre to some degree, but I was never quite interested enough to dig into their story. This film definitely made me realize what I was missing out on, and how incredible Kathleen was (and still is).

She is exactly the kind of person I aspire to be – and I have been living by her manifesto, despite not being particularly aware, of it all along. Her “ALL GIRLS TO THE FRONT” mentality at shows is literally the best concept in music history, ever. EVERY BAND SHOULD DO THIS. The way they explained it in the film made me so happy, because men don’t seem to realize that they make such a hostile environment for women at shows – or they do realize and they just don’t care. The last thing I want to deal with is getting head butted by moshers (this has happened to me) because I’m at the front trying to actually see the band. If the male population were kind enough to do that shit in the back, and stand back so that women who are generally at least 5 inches shorter, could actually see the stage – the concert going experience would be oh so wonderful for everyone.

I wish I could have went to a Bikini Kill show just to be a part of a concert where there was a priority put on women actually being comfortable/having a stage sight-line.

The look into her health issues and the decision to end Le Tigre was also insightful. Lyme disease is something most people (myself included) certainly don’t understand, and it went a long way to explaining how dreadful the disease can be – especially when it makes a singer lose control of her most precious asset – her voice. I also loved when she talked about meeting Adam Horovitz and feeling conflicted about dating someone who sang such sexist songs in those early Beastie Boys days, and how you don’t choose who you fall in love with.

If you are at all interested in 90s music culture, feminism, riot grrrls or just want to see a doc about a groundbreaking artist, make it a point to see The Punk Singer.

I’ll admit I was fairly uninterested in the whole Pussy Riot thing. I heard about it non stop to the point where I just decided to tune it out. Again, not being all that into the riot grrrl scene, I just didn’t pay much attention. When I hear Peaches is involved in something I kind of lose interest, as it always tends to feel like a spectacle.

Of course, seeing Pussy Riot – A Punk Prayer made me feel foolish for not paying attention. It is scary to me that this kind of church meets state environment still exists in what looks like a modern part of the world. They were doing nothing more than what Kathleen Hanna and the riot bands did 20 years ago, but they are in jail for it!

The best part of Hot Docs is that it shocks me into remembering just how lucky I am to be living where I do, in the age that I do. After watching the injustice these girls are going through, I am thanking my lucky stars that I do not live in Russia. It literally boggles my mind that things could still be so backwards in a developed country – but religion makes people act in very strange (ungodly) ways.

Can you imagine being sent to jail for 2 YEARS for just barely starting to sing a ‘punk rock’ song in a church? It’s absurd. I agree that it was crossing a line since so many people were offended by it, and they could have maybe banned them from the church for life or something – but putting them in jail away from their babies for years because they created art in public? Insane.

The film gives these women faces, families, and history – which is something you don’t get through our exploitative news. Watching their parents talk about how they were as kids, and how they grew into feminist artists trying to move their part of the world forward in the same way that Kathleen Hanna did, makes it a must see. It’s also inspiring to hear them talk during sentencing – the fearlessness these women have for the message they are trying to spread of equality for all women is so powerful. I know that when they get out they will continue to create positive change and hopefully help move Russia into the current decade.

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When I think about kids watching a TV show like American Idol or The Voice, then they think, ‘Oh, OK, that’s how you become a musician, you stand in line for eight fucking hours with 800 people at a convention center and… then you sing your heart out for someone and then they tell you it’s not fuckin’ good enough.’ Can you imagine? It’s destroying the next generation of musicians.

Musicians should go to a yard sale and buy an old fucking drum set and get in their garage and just suck. And get their friends to come in and they’ll suck, too. And then they’ll fucking start playing and they’ll have the best time they’ve ever had in their lives and then all of a sudden they’ll become Nirvana. Because that’s exactly what happened with Nirvana. Just a bunch of guys that had some shitty old instruments and they got together and started playing some noisy-ass shit, and they became the biggest band in the world.

That can happen again. You don’t need a fucking computer or the internet or The Voice or American Idol.

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Another giveaway! Black Rebel Motorcycle Club is back with their new album Specter At The Feast, and they’ll be playing Kool Haus in Toronto Thursday night in support of it. I couldn’t be happier. They’ve been one of my favourites since they released the absolutely flawless Howl in 2005 – one of the strongest albums of the decade.

Thanks to Live Nation you can win a pair of tickets to see them play by subscribing to TTRO – just enter your email in that little box on the left sidebar and once you click the confirmation email you will be entered. If you’re already a subscriber and you’d like to enter, just comment below using the email you used to subscribe – where it asks for your email (not in the body of the comment!) – so I can confirm.

Contest ends and the winner will be contacted Thursday morning. Watch the video for the gorgeous new track “Returning” below:

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This is so cool. Click here to go to the interactive map from the Every Noise At Once project, and click on any genre you want to hear a sample from a song that falls within that genre. For so long I had no idea what the difference between the 1000 kinds of metal were! This is quite helpful. If you hit the ‘scan’ button it’ll randomly play songs from throughout the map, try it.

It’s interesting to see which artists and songs fit into which genre. It’s a given that Dylan would represent ‘folk’ and Nick Drake ‘british folk’, but bands like Modest Mouse (lo-fi), Cat Power (slow core?! lol), Yeah Yeah Yeahs (indie rock) and Bruce Springsteen (roots rock) all could have been given other genres. Also surprised that The Beatles were not the ‘british invasion’ song, and that Nirvana played for ‘alternative rock’ rather than ‘grunge.’

It’s not quite every genre of all time (people keep making new ones up daily – Cold Specks will put ‘doom soul’ on that map!), but according to the site it is a work in progress they continue to update – definitely something worth bookmarking.

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